


Some Notes on Celestial Vulnerability

by Storycat9



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, F/M, Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Light BDSM, Light Dom/sub, Some bad language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:35:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25575178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Storycat9/pseuds/Storycat9
Summary: Vulnerability, Lucifer tells Dr. Linda, is bloody annoying, from stubbed toes to gunshot wounds. It spreads in ways he can't understand, the more time he's around the Detective.But getting rid of it may be worse.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 28
Kudos: 198





	1. Irritations

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you just scanning for your OTP, we've got feels here but you'll have to wait for your Deckerstar-specific smut until the next chapter. Patience is a virtue, you know.

It’s a sheer, utter surprise, the first time. 

Surrounded by these sniveling, curled-up humans, annoyed at the suspicion and doubt on the Detective’s face, Lucifer Morningstar goads the policewoman to shoot him, anticipating the moment her blue eyes will snap wide with shock. It will be worth the loss of a suit. Instead, a dull heat thuds across his leg, so sudden that for a moment he doesn’t lose stride in his rant. 

“Good for you!” he congratulates the suddenly ashen Detective. “See, hardly hurts.”

Then it catches up. White hot, not like the friction burn of Falling, but like the stab of a Celestial sword into his thigh. He presses his hand to his leg, bewildered. “Ah, actually no, it’s hurting a little bit. Gah, it’s hurting a lot—sonovabitch, that really hurts!” 

Beneath the ruthless pain, a wetness against his hand. He pulls it away and stares at the bright red on his palm. He feels his pulse, his power thudding in his throat and ears, because what he’s seeing isn’t possible.

“I’m bleeding?”

“You’re bleeding,” the Detective answers, equally shocked.

“I’m bleeding,” he says again, still unable to process.

“God, _of course_ you’re bleeding,” she snaps, angry with herself. “What have I done?”

“I don’t … I don’t bleed,” he tries to explain, half to himself. His leg can no longer hold his weight and he falls. 

If Detective Chloe Decker transformed into a flying rhinoceros at this moment, Lucifer Morningstar could not be more surprised. He almost wishes she would, as it would make it a bit easier to believe this whole evening is a particularly strange LSD trip.

* * *

Vulnerability, Lucifer tells Dr. Linda, is bloody annoying. 

Facing suspects who might shoot him is a bit of a reckless rush. Taking an injury for the Detective, seeing her eyes widen with concern (for _him_ . _Him!_ ) can make his stomach feel warm in strange ways that he both does and doesn’t like to think about.

But those are the exciting bits. 

Lucifer finds his body doesn’t move as effortlessly through the Earth as it used to. He stubs his toe, gashes his thumb while slicing limes for a daiquiri, gets a paper cut from a file folder in one of the Detective’s endless stacks of paperwork. He gets third-degree burns carrying her out of a fire— _fair heroic, that_ , he thinks—but when she waits for him to take a shower on the way to an evening work event, he nearly leaps out of the spray after stepping in, scalded by a temperature that had only ever felt lukewarm before. Worst of all, the backs of his ears burn from standing around on a beach crime scene that takes hours to process. A _sunburn,_ for Dad's sake, for the one who lit the stars themselves? It heals in hours, before he can suffer the indignity of peeling skin, but it’s the principle of the thing.

His eyes tear up and his nose runs unflatteringly over his usual lamb vindaloo, ordered in on a late work night at the precinct. He grins in spite of the ribbing he gets from the Detective and Miss Lopez (thankfully the Douche isn’t on hand), relishing the heat of the spice and the soothing sweetness of his mango lassi.

The Detective smiles at him as they walk to interview a suspect, her head tilted ever so slightly toward his, and his heart trips, and he trips, and he barks his shin quite badly on a bicycle stand. The bruise swells under his skin; he winces an hour or so later when he accidentally bumps it against the leg of the Detective’s desk. She pulls up his suit leg with all the efficient concern of a single mum and she bites her lower lip as her fingers gently trace the outline of blackish-blue skin. A faint, sharp ache twined with a jolt of pleasure radiates from her touch through every nerve in his body, raising the small hairs on his arms and the back of his neck, pulling out a gasp that he quickly covers with an overly dramatic howl of anguish. The Detective rolls her eyes and he tries to remember how to breathe.

All these little annoying, embarrassing, confusing _sensations_ pile up, making no sense at all. Vulnerability to bullets, to stabbing, sure, good way to get him killed; but vulnerability to Indian spices and California summers? His temper grows short, and shorter; his paranoia more intense. Angels are not made for uncertainty; wars in Heaven have been started over it.

He finds himself in the Detective’s house late one night to confront her, a knife hidden behind his back. She trusts him, she says before he can ask anything. She admits there’s something between them. She feels able to let her guard down and be vulnerable around him. The Detective as good as places herself into his hands—even more than she had when she’d drunkenly propositioned him, for she’s stone sober and there’s no question of free will.

This should make Lucifer feel better. Doesn’t this mean that he can seduce her any time he wants her now? Doesn’t it mean he finally has a better handle on the situation? Why doesn’t the Detective seem to feel the earthquake lifting the ground under them in a nauseating wave?

Both of Lucifer's hands close convulsively on the knife, and he draws his left away only to hide it quickly behind his back again, closing his long fingers around the blood in his palm. 

"If it's any sop to your pride, Detective, it appears you make me vulnerable, too."

Question answered. And absolutely nothing makes sense at all.

* * *

“For some reason Detective Decker makes me vulnerable.” 

He’s back in Dr. Linda’s office, in an emergency session.

“Also known as intimacy,” she interjects.

“No! No, she literally makes me exsanguinate.”

Linda tries again. “Being vulnerable can be scary. But there are benefits when you open yourself up to someone.”

“I just wish I knew who was behind this,” he frets. “My dad? My brother? Someone else? I mean, the detective doesn’t seem to know, but she could be lying. Is she part of the plan to kill me or is she just a pawn?”

“Maybe we should explore the possibility that being vulnerable can be a good thing—”

“No, it can’t! It means you are at someone else’s mercy!”

Linda’s face stills, and an expression close to pity flickers across it before she schools it to neutrality again. “Then maybe you should just stay away from everybody. Stay away from Chloe.”

“But …” his voice goes small and bewildered. “I don’t want to.”

Linda smiles. “Then don’t.”

* * *

The vulnerability spreads, in unusual ways, the more time he's around the Detective. Even if she's not right next to him.

Take sex, for example.

By noon on a Thursday with no new case forthcoming, Lucifer still lolls in bed, enjoying the remains of his hump day: a long-legged, green-eyed ginger courtesy of Lux’s Wednesday happy hour. Vanessa’s secret desire—discerned via two Moscow mules and a rakish smile, no mojo required—is to be taken on the edge of a dropoff, one slip away from falling. It’s the sort of fantasy he could get behind, quite literally, bending her over the balcony railing in his penthouse and holding both her wrists together behind her back as he pounded into her with gusto. The cool air up here chilled her nipples. She whimpered and moaned and begged Lucifer not to drop her as he held her wrists one-handed. It was an easy little fantasy to fulfill, given his strength and the almost unnoticed protection of his other hand curving around her hip. It was a good thing, too; the second time Vanessa came so hard she nearly flipped over the side.

By the time Mazikeen shows up with breakfast this morning, Vanessa has been passed out for a couple of hours and Lucifer feels as smug and relaxed as a tomcat in the sun. He watches, a triple espresso and a croissant in hand, while Maze brings his overnight guest from deep sleep to panting, sheets-clutching wakefulness with a few well-placed swirls of his demon’s very clever mouth. 

Maze lifts her head, her dark eyes glinting at Lucifer. “So this is Wednesday's catch? Not bad, for being the only one.”

He grins back, taking the jibe but pleased his demon is playful rather than sulky this morning. “Oh, Vanessa is perfect for you, Mazie, aren’t you darling? Watch, you’ll like this little trick.” He finishes his coffee and crosses to them on the bed, running one hand up that endlessly long leg while Vanessa just moans, her eyes huge. 

Maze sits back on her knees as Lucifer licks and nibbles at Vanessa’s nearest breast, then scoops her up bridal-style in his arms and carries her back out to the balcony with his demon following. 

“More, darling?” he asks the woman in his arms. Her mouth is open but she can barely do more than nod, she’s so trembling with lust.

“So you enjoyed last night,” he tells her, his voice a pleased purr. “But you’d like to be a little bit more terrified, wouldn’t you? Mazikeen, would you brace that cushion on the railing for me? Thank you, dear.” 

“So …” he says, abruptly seating Vanessa on the precariously cushioned railing and holding her hips steady with an iron grip. “You can get down, if you like, and give me a pretty kiss goodbye and be on your way—with a pastry, even. Or ...” He leans into her, enjoying the frantic flexing of her muscles as she fights for balance and the way her body sways toward and away from him as the fear and desire twines in her.

“Or you can _stay right there_ and wait for me to finish the rest of my breakfast”—a wolfish glance down and back up—”and I guarantee you will have a splendid morning. Of course, if you can’t hold yourself still up there, you’re likely to fall to your death, but it would be a nice view on the way down, wouldn’t it?”

Ah, the joy of gingers and their nearly translucent skin; Lucifer can see the flush and the violent beat of her pulse at the side of her throat. She's too nervous to speak yet, and so he does nothing— _the delightful tortures of requiring affirmative consent,_ he thinks—but he can read her answer in her eyes, her body, the way her hands grip his wrists. She nods, jerkily, and he smiles but shakes his head slowly.

“Speak, lovely.”

Vanessa takes a shuddering breath. “Take me, please. I’ll hold on.”

Lucifer hears Maze’s pleased chuckle behind him as he slides down Vanessa's body, kneeling against his lounger and wrapping those long legs over his back. As soon as her legs hook around him he releases the pressure on her hips, just enough to throw her balance a little, and at the same time dives face-first between her thighs.

Vanessa gives a little shriek that turns into a long, low moan, but she manages to stay upright, her back arched and her legs clamped hard around his head. He keeps his hands back just enough to catch her, just far enough that she can’t feel the security of them. And the Devil finds himself grinning into her warm, slick folds, teasing her clit with little loops and swirls of his tongue. He can’t use his hands without risking her actually falling, but there’s so much one can do with a creative mouth and thousands of years of practice, isn’t there? Vanessa comes, and comes again, harder, panting and weeping with the effort to keep her balance, giving little screams each time her legs slip on his back, though each time she does, her fear brings the next orgasm just that little bit more quickly. 

It’s the opposite of torture, the opposite of punishment, everything about power in pleasure and giving. Lucifer rolls his eyes up to watch his partner’s face in that instant the roller coaster drops. He has a split-second memory of the Detective effortlessly facing him down the last time they argued, wonders for a moment what it would take for her to come undone this completely.

He hears, muffled, some noise toward the front of the penthouse, and Maze moving to deal with it, politely closing the sliding door behind her. Vanessa’s likely to pass out with much more of this, and Lucifer’s more than ready to fuck her silly, so he’s wrapping his arms around her waist to pull her down to the cushion when another orgasm hits her. Her hands lose purchase on the railing and grab him instead, clawing her nails into his shoulder as she shrieks.

Lucifer might have expected this. What he does not expect is for Vanessa’s nails to gouge him like a cat in heat, deep enough to leave trails of blood. There's a tiny shock, an unprecedented spice like his vindaloo. He yelps and rears back, his own orgasm hitting like a freight train as he spills Vanessa into a barely coherent puddle on the chaise.

Lucifer blinks. Touches a hand to his shoulder and looks at it, fresh blood bright red in the sun. 

He turns toward the penthouse in time to see the elevator doors close. From closer, Maze opens the sliding door and holds out a fat file folder. All his happy control, his gratified, dominant headspace shatters like a dropped whisky glass.

“The Detective?” he sighs. It’s a little shaky, damnit, even if Maze is the only one who’d be able to tell. 

She smirks, far too amused. “New case dropped. But she said go ahead and take the day off if you need to ... _rest up_.”

* * *

He learns, from a university academic-turned-poisoner, exactly how far away he must stay from the Detective to remain physically invulnerable. He learns, from the same, very foolish, man, how far he will go to keep the Detective with him.

So. 

Vulnerability means danger. It is … important … for him to know where the Detective is in relation to himself. Survival instinct, really. At idle moments Lucifer finds his thoughts turning to her, what she’s doing, what her existence means. 

Sometimes he can feel his own precariousness in her orbit; his very skin is more fragile and sensitive. The air near the Detective crackles with potential—not for sex, or even danger, but for change. Evenings when a shared drink or afternoons when a shared joke—the kind that makes her snort like a grubby little urchin herself—fills up his bones with strength and lightness. Intermittent reward, a conditioning schedule neither of them realize they follow, coming together and backing away. He plays with his solidifying lead-line: time away from her, testing himself against that strange hollow feeling, the dull ache, the discomfort that grows sharper and sharper in his chest until he seizes upon an excuse to drop by the precinct, or maybe even her house.

He decidedly ignores the way every knot inside his chest unravels when she smiles at him. He tells Dr. Linda it’s an odd side effect of her being a miracle.

Lucifer tells Linda many things, in many sessions, particularly while Cain is in the picture, but he never stays to the end of their time.

He kisses her on his balcony, feeling not just vulnerable but raw, and when the Detective holds his face between her hands and kisses him back it’s not like regaining his wings; it’s like never having Fallen. Homesafetyjoybliss, through every nerve and sinew. It’s over before half-begun, and still better than anything, with any human who has come before. All on its own a kiss to make all the pain and danger worth it.

* * *

Until he kills Cain. Until the Detective sees him, truly, and runs. When she is gone, Lucifer realizes the true danger in his little miracle. Without her, the script flips: he is rendered invulnerable, not just to pain, but to everything. Sex with the Brittanys feels like embracing a pillow. The noise in Lux seeps through cotton in his head. All drugs might as well be barbiturates. His chest feels tight and hollow at the same time and tinnitus sings all day, all night.

When the Detective comes back, he reads fear and betrayal in the corner of her mouth and the line of her wrists and her microscopic flinch when he leans toward her. Lucifer lets it go. The ringing in his ears stops at the moment she holds an ax over his chest and his skin parts again, finally, at that slight pressure. 

“If I pushed this into your chest, it would kill you?” she asks, as the unis take away another killer they’ve caught and he remains pinned motionless before her.

“Yes.”

“Because I’m close to you?”

“Yes.”

“But you jumped in front of it anyway?”

“Yes.” All Lucifer’s breath goes out in his sigh; he feels almost infinitely tired. “And I would do it again, and again. Don’t you know that, Detective?”

* * *

Lucifer finds himself killable again. Maybe that is for the best. The Detective’s betrayal and fear flay him open, push and keep him in a more distant orbit. Being invulnerable has become intolerable, but he refuses to be vulnerable to the Detective anymore. He holds in his mind a masochist he’d met in Hell, who begged for any cruelty so long as it kept the King of Hell’s attention. His Pride will not allow him to become so.

He jokes darkly about the ongoing irritations of vulnerability. He shows off to Dr. Linda the massive hole beneath his shoulder blade where he is impaled during a bar fight because he hadn’t realized the detective would show up. Once he and the Detective tentatively begin to work together again, Lucifer still can get a paper cut at the precinct, or burn his mouth on bad coffee, or bump his elbow and swear. These are accidents, annoyances; in no way does he continue to test himself around her. He brushes off the look on his new girlfriend’s face when he comes home with band-aids. 

Lucifer once even deliberately tries to time an orgy, knowing the Detective plans to drop by with case files. He half-hopes for a little repeat sensation in the midst of a particularly vigorous bout with Eve and a half-dozen friends she’s brought home. The Detective sends the files up with Patrick, is gone before he even knows she’s there.

* * *

Lucifer steps into the amphitheater of the Mayan in the full of his power, the Detective a careful distance away. Dealing with his recalcitrant demons is almost fun, once Eve takes baby Charlie safely out of the picture. A little of his rage at Eve’s part in letting the demons get through slides away at her rescue of the baby, lightening his heart and focusing his wrath more cleanly on Dramos and Squee and their pathetic little possessed army. He wades through them, not bothering to change form, only barely bothering to remove his jacket. 

The Detective arrives with her perfect, horrible timing when she thinks it’s over, desperate to make sure he’s safe. Lucifer feels power and righteous fury boiling beneath his skin and moves forward to intercept her. 

“You need to leave, Detective.” He keeps hellfire from his eyes with an effort.

“I know, I make you vulnerable,” she apologizes.

He could laugh at that; no mortal or celestial weapon could touch him at this moment. “No, that’s not it,” he growls. “I don’t want you to see me like this. I know it scares you.”

“No!” she stops him. “That’s what I was trying to tell you before. I’m not … I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

“You’re not? But then why have you been so worried about my face, about all of it coming back?” 

“I wasn’t afraid of you; I was afraid of losing you,” she says, shaking her head a little at the chaos around them. “That all this would take over and you’d forget this place. That you’d forget about me. Lucifer, I lo—”

His brother Amenadiel does nothing, but time still seems to slow as a second wave of demons breaks over her and Lucifer very suddenly remembers what he has ignored or forgotten all this time, in all his morose pondering of celestial vulnerability.

Chloe Decker is human. Miracle or not, she always has been. She has always been as vulnerable around Lucifer as he is around her, and fought to protect him as much as he protected her. She’s always been vulnerable _to_ him, not because of his devilish power but because of the simple human gift she had given from that first night he confronted her with a knife behind his back: the gift of her trust, her faith in him, her slow but steady-growing love. She has been vulnerable this whole time, and still pulled into his orbit as much as he’s been pulled into hers. It’s about to kill her, and her eyes still never leave his own.

Lucifer sees his Father’s trap yawn open in the horde of demons surrounding them, and the hordes he knows are waiting to come unless he returns to Hell. He steps into it, invulnerable.


	2. Balm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On very, very rare occasions his courtiers see their King, when deep in thought, glance at his left hand and stroke across the palm, as if tracing a mark. But there are no symbols, no scars; the most adept conniver of the Court can glean no meaning from it. 
> 
> The King of Hell has no vulnerabilities in his Realm.
> 
> But Lucifer Morningstar remembers them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys, I thought this would be done in two, but I think it'll take one more chapter.

The King sits atop the High Throne. 

The Realm brings him flakes of ash, the scent of sulphur, the howls of the tormented. His ever-filling inbox relays the goings on of the land.

The Lucifer who would never shut up on Earth speaks little here. Opening his mouth for any reason coats his tongue for hours with the taste of smoke and burning flesh. It’s funny, now, to note that of all his little quirks none of the humans ever noticed that he never ate pork. 

When he must speak, the King of Hell makes sure his words are remembered. Every demon who disobeyed his order against possession—and the arch-demon, Azaroth, who sanctioned them leaving—are taken down to their constituent parts. He does so personally, his Wrath so icy it flows as perfect calm. When gore surrounds him hip-high on all sides, and all the denizens of Hell stand silent, he flashes his most charming smile.

“Congratulations to all my good little duckies who stayed here," he says brightly. "You seem to have an adequate survival instinct! To help it along, here’s a little addendum to my previous order: If anyone breaks my possession ban again, I will hunt them down. I will hunt down their superiors, and their peers, and any demon who’s laid eyes on them in the last decade. And I will use whatever is left of the lot of them to fill a new moat on the Realm’s northern border. Now _go_.”

His centuries pass, with the usual politics and pain and depravities. His rule is beyond iron; it is air and earth and fire and stone; to cross the King is to court nonexistence.

On very, very rare occasions his courtiers see their King, when deep in thought, glance at his left hand and stroke across the palm, as if tracing a mark. But there are no symbols, no scars; the most adept conniver of the Court can glean no meaning from it. 

The King of Hell has no vulnerabilities in his Realm.

But Lucifer Morningstar remembers them.

* * *

Chloe Decker opens her front door to a chest-high lump of sooty feathers.

She breathes in and out, waiting for it to disappear. When it doesn’t, she carefully plunges her hands past the primaries—caked in gunk but somehow still soft underneath—until she can part them enough to see the filthy, naked, unconscious angel balled up under them. Chloe sees him breathing, the strong and steady pulse at his throat, and makes a quick calculation of how bad this is, and in what way. She lets the feathers fall back while she digs in her pocket for her phone. 

First call to the station, requesting a week of emergency leave. 

Second call to Dan, calling on one of the many, many favors he owes her to keep Trixie another night, probably two. He hears something thread-taut in her voice and agrees without question.

Third call to Linda, which means to Maze and Amenadiel too. On this call she knows she has to actually say it, and forcing the words out clogs her throat with tears.

“Linda, he’s back. He’s here. Can you ask Amenadiel to come? He seems to be unconscious, but—thanks. I’ll let you know more when I do.”

That done, she knows she can’t move him by herself, can’t tell whether he’s hurt in some Celestial way she wouldn’t be able to see. She doesn’t know if at some moment she’ll have to fight to keep Hell from coming to get him.

John Decker's daughter does what she can do. She takes out the Glock, unsnaps the holder on the smaller pistol at her ankle. She sits down, the line of her body pressed against the heap of Lucifer on her porch. She keeps one hand on her gun, the other buried in his sticky-soft feathers. She weeps as silently as she can, and scans their surroundings, and tries to hold herself together.

* * *

The King of Hell wakes in darkness and confusion. No one's screaming. The air tastes clean in his mouth. His wings are in, but three slate-grey angel feathers lie across his chest, glowing faintly. He can feel the pull of still-healing injuries when he shifts position.

He senses movement, half rolls to see a small blonde woman waking from an uncomfortable-looking position on the armchair next to the bed. When she sees him, her eyes shoot wide, the pupils dilating. “Oh, thank goodness, you’re awake! Lucifer—”

She leans toward him and he reacts immediately, grabbing her wrists and using her own momentum to pull her over him and pin her against the bed. Aches flare all along his body at the sudden movement. His eyes ignite, his wings snapping out in threat display.

The woman freezes, as well she should. She’s unarmed, but strong for such a smallish human. Her face is somehow hard to look at. His brain stutters a bit, meeting her eyes, and the King of Hell snarls.

“I think I made it distinctly clear that I am not to be disturbed when I am resting. It annoys me,” he grinds out. “Who are you and where am I?”

Her mouth drops open, but she says nothing. Tears fill and overflow her gaze, kindling a strange rage and pain in the pit of his stomach. The King of Hell feels no guilt. He squeezes the fragile bones beneath his hands hard enough to make her gasp. “I am getting impatient. Speak.”

“Lucifer, it’s me. It’s Chloe,” she pants. “You know me. Try to remember. Lucifer, you’re here with me in my house in L.A. You’re safe.”

His face twists. Most of what she says ricochets in his head without meaning, but the word _chloe_ he knows. The most guarded protection rune in his mind, his last failsafe. Crouching above her feels like kneeling on glacier that’s cracking all the way through. If they’ve found out his failsafe, then he is vulnerable, in danger. The King of Hell shudders, tries to control it and finds he can’t, which is even more horrifying. And the woman under him still repeats the same words she’s said over and over in a low, soft voice. He realizes she’s not even …

“Why aren’t you afraid?” he purrs. “You should be.”

And her eyes turn fierce, the expression cracking the ice in him even more. “No, Lucifer. I told you, I’m won’t be afraid of you anymore, any part of you. I love you. It’s _Chloe_ , Lucifer, remember me? You’re hurting my arms.”

He abruptly sits back on his knees, releasing her. Without moving, he scans the room. Blue patterned wallpaper, a row of dolls and stuffed animals on the window, the trappings of a young human. A hell loop? But the air feels wrong, and everything around him feels solid, without the faint telltale waiver of reality in a hell loop. Earth. He’s in the living world again.

To his right, there’s a mirror vanity edged with pictures of a small, dark-haired human spawn. In one she’s hugging the woman beneath him, both of them smiling so bright he flinches away from it. He sees the girl-child pushed on a swing by a man, climbing a tree with other little humans, posing in a crouch with a curved dagger and a sharp grin.

_Mazikeen’s dagger._

_Maze_.

He sees his demon’s picture now, on the opposite corner, looking nearly unrecognizable with her head thrown back laughing, spinning the child through the air … spinning _Trixie_.

And next to that, the picture that cracks him open all the way: Trixie flipping omelets next to Lucifer Morningstar, his impeccable Armani suit covered by an apron, and her mother cheering them on.

He’s in Trixie’s bedroom. And underneath him …

“... Chloe? … _Chloe_ … how did I—I’m so ... so sorry, darling …”

“Lucifer.” She sits up and scoots out from under him. When he makes no further move toward her, she reaches out, her hands against his cheeks, kneeling up to press her forehead to his. The shuddering grows worse; she’s holding him together with main strength. He wraps his hands around hers, and the King of Hell feels Lucifer Morningstar unfold inside of him.

“You’re safe, Lucifer. You’re here, I’ve got you, you’re safe.”

Lucifer holds on. Everything in his whole body hurts.

* * *

Chloe has miscalculated. It takes two solid weeks to get Lucifer out of Trixie’s bed. She calls in every favor and unused vacation day she’s got—thankfully as a semi-workaholic she has a lot of them—and Amenadiel helps explain the situation to Dan. 

She tells Trixie herself. “I know he will want to see you, monkey, but he’s really sick right now. I promise you can come visit as soon as he’s feeling a little better.”

Maze comes by with clothes from the penthouse while he’s asleep, but doesn’t stay. “Being around a demon right now might not be great,” she says.

“Was he like this before? The last time you two came to earth?”

Maze’s mouth tightens. “Last time, we sat on the beach and cut off his wings, and then went for a drink.” Maze promises to freshen up the penthouse for them and gets out of Dodge.

Lucifer shies back from seeing anyone, even a few days later when he’s completely healed. Chloe spends hours on the phone with Linda while he sleeps, trying to work out what happened to him, how long he might have been gone in Hell's time. Linda went back for a trauma certification after the Mayan—and a first-aid refresher—reasoning that her particular immortal therapy niche seemed to require a more specialized skill set. She tries to assure Chloe that the hyper-vigilance, the nightmares and panic attacks and times when he just holds her and stares into space, are all _normal for trauma_ , for whatever that’s worth.

They both panic when Lucifer starts cutting himself whenever Chloe steps out of the room for more than a handful of minutes. She tries to stop him, and he strokes her hair as though she's the one in need of comfort.

"It's fine, darling, don't worry. I was just checking to see where you were."

* * *

Twelve days after he showed up on her doorstep, Lucifer is awake enough, _Lucifer_ enough, to want more of a shower than Chloe’s little bathroom can provide.

“You really need an orgy-sized bathroom, darling,” he quips over coffee. “I can’t even unfurl my wings here; they itch something dreadful.”

This said with a smile, but also a quick sideways glance through his dark lashes; it’s the first time he’s mentioned anything supernatural since returning. Chloe deliberately smiles back, reaches for his hand; her heart aches a little at his expression. 

“I can drive you over as soon as we’re done with breakfast,” she says, then wonders why his hand convulsively grips hers.

He hums, sipping his coffee. Offhand, he asks, “Fancy coming up with me? I won’t take long. … or of course, you’re welcome to wash my back for me.” 

He wags his eyebrows lasciviously— _trademarked Classic Lucifer?_ she thinks—but his grip is still a touch too tight to be casual. She has slept next to him every night, rarely been out of arm’s length to touch him or let him hold her, but they’ve done no more than that.

She wags her own eyebrows back, then laughs out loud at his surprise. “I think that’s a great idea.”

* * *

Chloe finds Lucifer leaning against the back wall of his enormous walk-in shower, his forehead cushioned on his arms against the black marble while top and side shower heads alike sluice over his wings. The spray is so hot it fills the room with steam and prickles up goosebumps along his skin, but his feathers still look like dirty dishwater. He slants a cat-eyed look at her when she appears in one of his fluffy black robes, which turns affronted when he sees the plastic bottle she carries. 

“Dawn? What in hell is that for? You have the most luxurious unguents and oils on the planet in this bathroom, darling; you’re not coming in here with dish soap.”

Chloe shakes her head and grins, holding up a package of new toothbrushes and a stack of terry-cloth washrags in her other hand. 

“I spent part of a summer interning up at Morro Bay for a part in a movie about kid eco-crusaders,” she says smugly. “We had a whole assembly line of volunteers at the aquarium with tubs of water and Dawn after a tanker leaked off the coast; trust me, this is how we get that oily gunk off wings without messing them up.”

He huffs, mutters about the dignity of the King of Hell and accuses her of wanting celestial car-washes next. His complaints trail off at the sudden steely glint in her eye as she places her supplies on the little bamboo bench next to the shower and unties her robe, letting it fall.

Lucifer has seen Chloe Decker naked. If one’s being precise, Lucifer has been familiar with the curves and color of her breasts and the shadow below her collarbone for years before he ever had the pleasure of an introduction. It makes not one jot of difference: A fine tremor runs through him, his expression flipping from teasing to utterly serious. His mouth opens but not a single blessed word comes out.

Chloe steps in beside him, presses a hand gently against his shoulder to make him turn toward her, raises herself on her highest tiptoe and twines her fingers into his hair, tugging his head head down.

“You don’t need to worry about your _dignity_ , Lucifer,” she half growls against his mouth. “You are hereby permanently _retired_.”

Their kiss is not gentle.

It is, in fact, the antithesis of their last kiss on the balcony: nothing wistful or sweet or heartbreaking, but alive and almost furious. Chloe presses herself against him and feels his arms and wings alike wrap around her, lifting her off the ground. She wraps her legs around his waist and leverages up, pressing him harder as he groans into her mouth. Lucifer leans back against the wall and kisses her as though he’s drowning.

He holds her easily, and that’s good, because the world is going a little fuzzy, narrowing down to his mouth on Chloe’s neck, the tender ridge of his ear against her tongue, his teeth grazing the tip of one breast in a way that makes her cry out and buck against him, clinging to his hair.

The Devil has no art or artifice here; Chloe feels him hard beneath her and whines against his mouth, pulling back from a kiss long enough to pant, “Please, now. Lucifer, please, _please—_ ” 

There’s a moment when she can see him hesitate, some complex, long-planned seduction nothing like this in his head, and she shakes her own head frantically, her eyes huge.

“I just want you, Lucifer. I love you. _Please_.”

His eyes close as though she’s struck him, but he shifts her hips in his hands so that she can slide down onto him, both of them gasping as he fills her.

For a long moment they stay that way, borrowed into one another and holding on as tightly as they can. Chloe can see nothing beyond them but feathers. Lucifer tucks his head to her neck, murmuring, “I love you,” against her skin.

Lucifer shifts them as they begin to move, bracing her against the marble now. She uses it to push back as he presses into her, filling her senses with his scent, his touch, the taste of his steam-soaked skin. The pleasure builds where they touch, radiates up her spine and up, more, and more and more and more …

Everything tightens in her and explodes; her hands clench on his shoulders and she screams, coming so hard her vision bursts with stars for a minute. Lucifer’s rhythm stutters when her nails dig in, then speeds up and a moment later he shudders hard against her, muffling his own cry against her hair. He holds her, chest heaving, before unsteadily sinking with her to the ground.

Chloe blinks, still lightheaded. The tiny flecks in her vision clear, but she starts to giggle, a little first and then building to full-on belly laughs that have Lucifer staring at her in concern.

“Chloe? … Darling, are you—”

“Fine! … I’m fine! I’m … great,” she gasps between giggles. “I just saw ... _stars_ … get it? You’re my Lightbringer.” She convulses with mirth again, as Lucifer smiles a little helplessly back at her. 

When her giggles finally die down— _am I hysterical? I might be hysterical, it’s OK, get it together, Decker_ —Chloe still can’t stop smiling. Lucifer cups her face in his hands and kisses her, much more softly this time.

“I love you, my Detective.”

“I love you. I’m so glad you’re home, Lucifer.”

Chloe sees that twinge in his eyes, some start of pain or fear or guilt, and shakes her head at him. She pushes herself to her unsteady feet and tugs his hands. “Or at least I will be glad, once you’re clean,” she teases. 

He huffs, but the shadow clears from his eyes and he stands up, turning his back and ruffling his wet feathers at her. 

“Do your worst, eco-crusader,” he smirks over his shoulder. “Frankly, I think if this much water can’t clean them, I’ll just have to wait until they molt on their own.”

* * *

It doesn’t take that long, but nearly. They turn off the shower before it turns cold and dry off a little. Lucifer pulls on sleep pants and Chloe a soft pair of cotton PJs; she eyes the early afternoon sun but knows they won’t be leaving anytime soon. Chloe spends the next two hours soaking washrags in warm, dish-soapy water in his bathroom sink, wringing them out, gently wiping down his wings feather by feather. 

Lucifer is no oil-drenched duckling; his wings are taller than she is and a single wing unfurls longer than she is tall. In some places the greasy ash cakes between the coverts and secondaries; she runs through two-thirds of her toothbrushes in the first hour, trying to brush the gunk out without tearing the feathers. In a few places she finds pin feathers hot and swollen at the base; she can’t tell if they have just gotten irritated from the cleaning or are infected—the latter could only be possible, she knows, now that he’s back here again. At Lucifer’s teeth-gritted direction, she pulls these with a pair of small pliers from a bathroom drawer, flushes and dresses the wounds. Slowly, slowly the wings come clean, until Chloe can gently sluice water over them leaving only gleaming white behind.

At first Lucifer white-knuckles his way through her ministrations, his body taut and flinching whenever she has to remove a pinfeather. She keeps her hands and voice gentle, telling him idle bits of gossip from the precinct, funny anecdotes about Maze and Linda and Amenadiel coping with the baby, Trixie’s latest school misadventures—all the little stories he’s missed. She watches his muscles incrementally relax, his wings start to push into her hand a little like a cat asking to be petted, so that by the time Chloe rinses the last of the soap away he hums appreciatively and stretches his wings out so far that Chloe can see the mirror-bright edge of his razored primaries. 

He ruffles them suddenly, showering her with water drops. She yelps and jumps back, and he grins at the glare she shoots him. 

One wing and arm catch her in a half-hug. “Thank you, love,” he says. “I know they’re not done, but they have to dry before anything else and we could use some dinner.”

She looks at the weary smudges under his eyes. “I think a break would be nice, yeah.” She shook out her wrists. “My hands are sore and I’m getting a little stiff.”

One eloquent eyebrow arches. “Isn’t that my line, darling?”

Chloe blows a raspberry at him and heads for the bar, plucking a Thai restaurant pamphlet from a pile of delivery menus. 

* * *

By the time the sun has started to set, they’re ensconced on the balcony. Chloe picks over the remains of her drunken noodles. Lucifer lounges on his stomach at her side, shamelessly stealing sips of Chloe’s Thai iced tea after insisting he only wanted whisky. (She got a large, knowing him too well.)

His wings stretch from one end of the balcony to the other, sun-warmed, ruffled and gleaming. She idly smooths the shoulder of wing nearest her, presses her fingers through the coverts to scratch at the down beneath. Lucifer’s eyelashes flutter closed for a moment, open again with an effort.

“They feel strong, but I didn’t realize they’d be so soft,” Chloe says.

“Mhmm,” he says, lifting his wing a little into her hand to give her better access to the down. She lightly rakes her fingers through it and he smiles. After a minute, in a sleepy purr: “Quieter.”

“Quieter?”

“Mhmm … like owls. Strong … the primaries for attack, but the softer the feathers, the more quietly we fly. ‘Menadiel’s smooth, not so soft … never gonna sneak up on me, he sounds like a bloody freight train ...”

Chloe gently straightens his feathers, but keeps her touches slow, listens to the Devil’s ever-running mouth run down.

“My sister’s the quietest of all of us,” he murmurs, his eyes flickering again. She’s seen Trixie do this countless times, fighting a lullaby. She smiles, asks in a low voice, “Your sister?”

“Azrael … her wings’re so soft … softest things in all Creation,” he says, then sighs. And then he’s done. The Devil’s immortal, and most of the time he looks like a handsome man in his early 40s. Right now, with his head pillowed on his arms and his dark lashes throwing shadows on his cheek, Lucifer looks barely in his 20s. 

Chloe watches him sleep as she combs through his wings and smooths his feathers, her hands gradually covered with talcum-fine powder down. At a touch or soft breath across them, the wings flare with their own light, like blowing across a banked coal.

Something hard and bright sparks in her, watching Lucifer sleep. 

_He’s not going back there, I don’t care what I have to do_ , she thinks, casting a prayer like a call to arms. _Come on demons, angels, Lucifer’s All-fucking-mighty Father Himself, you hear me? I will never, ever let you take him back._

She waits, but nothing answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Preening," as in what birds do to straighten their feathers, comes from the Latin word “ungere,” meaning “to anoint,” combined with the Northern English homonym meaning “to pierce or pin.” And if *that* wouldn't trigger a sex joke from the resident Devil, I'm not sure what would.
> 
> Oh! And for those of you interested in taking care of gunked-up winged creatures, this was a neat description: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2007/11/how-to-clean-an-oiled-bird.html


	3. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moments of a life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, this ending rolls into both some heavier angst and heavier sex, too. But fear not, nobody dies or is left unsatisfied, so all's well that ends well, right?

The predicted apocalypse doesn’t bother to show.

Oh, Lucifer expects it, with cheerful nihilism or raging fatalism by turns, waiting for his siblings or his Father to come to drive him back to Hell, or waiting for the demons he so ruthlessly cowed to rise up again, but Hell and the Silver City alike lay quiescent, content to bide their time. 

Likewise, he turns over the prophecy in his mind from time to time, looking at it from different angles: “When the Devil walks the Earth and finds his true love, evil shall be released.” He wonders whether the prophecy was completed with the demon uprising at the Mayan, or averted with his decision to go back to Hell, or if it just waits ahead of him and Chloe because of his return. 

His Detective, by contrast, has dumped her ill-advised one-night-stand with prophecy and fatalism and returned to absolute free will with a vengeance, if free will means Mazikeen-level contempt for his siblings and other demons. She trains with Maze now, and with Amenadiel, learning to fight as well against a Celestial as any human could hope to.

Lucifer learns she’d continued to work the Mayan case during his little business trip back to Hell. She’s interviewed Amenadiel, Linda, Mazikeen; gently but inexorably, she’s interviewed Eve:  _ What did you do? Why did you do it? What did you think would happen? Did you think you had a choice? _

She’s interviewed the parish priests, and the American bishops, and the Vatican’s own investigators, about Father Kinley and his acolytes:  _ What did he believe? Why? What did he do with it?  _

“Kinley made the equivalent of a Thursday horoscope listing into an obsession,” she tells him one evening after a few drinks, “and his colleagues in the Church went along with it because it was easier than arguing with him. I was stupid enough to believe it meant something, and betrayed you.” 

Lucifer tenses at the reminder, and Chloe lays her hand palm up near his own, to be accepted or rejected at his will.

“You hated yourself enough to accept it, but even then you knew it was bullshit; you thought of your first love as Eve, so you broke up with her and blamed it on the prophecy. … But that was wrong, wasn’t it, Lucifer? Did you know when you told her about the prophecy that it wasn't about her?”

He looks down at that for a moment, then forces himself to meet her eyes again. The Devil doesn’t lie. 

“No … but only because I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to think of it being you. I didn’t … I didn’t like you very much then, Detective. … I certainly didn’t want to be in love with you.” He gives a brittle laugh, but finds himself wrapping her upturned hand in both of his. “And I also didn’t want to be in love with you because that would mean that the bastard priest was right; you were the one in the prophecy, and if I didn’t want Hell on Earth I would have to stay as far away from you as possible. … Not my best logic, darling, I admit.”

The Morningstar has changed in many ways in his latest time on Earth; even this small bit of humor in relation to his Pride is a huge one. Chloe wraps her other hand around his and just holds on for a minute, but she keeps going.

“But don’t you see, Eve kidnaped Father Kinley to try to get him to tell you she wasn’t the one in the prophecy. They fought, and she killed him, and she sent his soul to Hell telling him to tell any demon who was listening to come help her get their King back.”

“I know all this, Chloe,” he says, using her name at the last minute to take the sting out of his words. “It was incredibly vague and elaborate--Dad’s favorite.”

“No!” she hisses. “It was nothing, Lucifer, don’t you see? What if you had never mentioned the prophecy to Eve? The two of you would have broken up for normal reasons, like people do, and it would have sucked but you both would have moved on. What if I had told Father Kinley that he was spouting useless gobbledygook? What if anyone, anywhere along the line had just said, nope, this is a random sentence and it doesn’t apply to my situation  _ at all _ ? I could have done that, and you wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

One hand still clinging to his hand, Chloe presses the other to his cheek and kisses him, and he tastes her tears in his mouth, a terrible thing, worse than ash. Then she raises her eyes to his, and he flinches a little from the shining hot fury in them.

“Never. Again. That prophecy was as real as a fortune cookie. I’m not ever listening to any of  _ Them  _ again. And if any of them try to take you again, I swear to you I will kill them all.”

Lucifer can admit to himself--if never to anyone else and  _ especially  _ never to Maze--that Chloe Decker can be just a little bit terrifying when she gets the steely blue, “avenging angel of justice” look in her eyes. It’s gorgeous and he loves it and loves watching her turn it on when she cracks a case. But having it turned snarling in protection of  _ him  _ … it lances some poisonous abscess deep inside him that he hadn’t even noticed was there, the pain bright and clean.

* * *

He has trouble with time. After the endless eons of the Silver City and Hell’s lackadaisical relationship with relativity, the steady plod of time on Earth keeps catching him off guard. Surrounded by the young and beautiful at his club, it’s easier to ignore, until the Friday night he comes upon Trixie in Lux with a passel of friends, not a fake ID among them. Her face still lights up when she sees him, but her hug takes the wind out of him in a different way when it hits at his chest instead of his knees. Her hands aren’t sticky anymore, which is a kindness, but her limbs seem too long and she moves now more like Mazikeen than the President of Mars. He pities the human males in her group, who already seem overawed.

“I saw the Urchin downstairs last night,” he tells the Detective over breakfast the next morning; she’d dragged herself into the penthouse sometime past 2 a.m. after hellacious wrangling of built-up paperwork. 

“Oh?” She grins, still not quite alive before she’s finished her second cup of coffee, but coming more awake with a mother’s gossip radar. “That’s great, so you’ve seen the new guy she’s got her eye on? She said she might drop by with him. What did you think?”

“What? Oh, no, surely not. Absolutely none of them at her level; Beatrice would eat them alive … and anyway, didn’t she think her male peers were useless bores?”

Chloe raises her eyebrows and smiles into her coffee at his instant dismissal and the faint protective flicker of hellfire in his eyes. “That was in high school, Lucifer,” she chides gently. “I’d hope she’s met slightly better guys at UCSD. Do you happen to remember if any of them was named Micah? Trixie’s been dropping that name a lot.”

He blinks at her, looks down at his triple espresso and realizes there’s no whisky in it. He decides he needs to remedy this situation immediately. “Hmm, no … doesn’t ring a bell,” he says as he goes to his bar. “None of them made an impression, I’m afraid.” Not that he won’t get a  _ very full  _ background report from Maze, now that he knows to ask for one. But …

“Hey, love, are you OK?”

Lucifer realises he’s been standing at his bar staring blankly at his enhanced coffee with the open whisky decanter still in his hand. Chloe’s hand comes over his and moves the decanter to one side, turning him toward her.  _ Has her hand always been this delicate? _

He tries to smile, but his muscles are rigid. “No, I’m … I--”

She nuzzles into his embrace, holding him hard in the way she does when this happens, and this close, looking down at the top of her honey-gold head, Lucifer can see a few thin strands of white here and there. His partner still looks the same to him, still tracks down a suspect with the same intelligence and ferocity she ever did, and he just … hadn’t noticed this. He finds himself breathing heavily around the sudden pressure in his chest. 

“Lucifer? ...  _ Lucifer _ , look at me.”

Chloe Decker’s skill as a detective has only grown in the last 15 years, and her skill in reading the partner she once found so unfathomable has become even more acute. She cups his face in her hands and looks into the anxiety in his dark eyes.

“Kids grow up, it’s OK. It’s just that she’s only been home on holidays the last couple of years; that’s why it snuck up on you a little,” she says. “You’ll probably like Trixie even better now that she can drink; she’ll be like a mini-Maze.” That last with her wry smile, but the one he tries to give in return cracks at the edges. She rests her forehead against his. 

“It’s OK. You’re safe; we’ve got time.” 

He shudders. His wings materialize reflexively and wrap them together even tighter. “So little of it,” he whispers. 

Chloe can’t lie to him; she doesn’t know what to do about eternity and oh, how deeply she hates his Father for this whole mess. But her familiar anger, the familiar terror and loss in his eyes; at least she’s learned what to do with  _ that _ . 

She returns his stare with sudden blue-eyed intensity, pulls back out through his wings, tugging him up and toward the stairs to the bedroom. “Come on, Lucifer. I can do an awful lot with a little time.”

* * *

_ They’re waiting, of course they’re waiting; it makes perfect sense,  _ Lucifer thinks _. Every day is one day closer to losing her, what’s another 40 years--50 if nothing goes wrong and her miracle status can grant her a little life extension--to the Silver City? God steps out for coffee, comes back and sends his sister Azrael to fetch his Detective home. What will he do?  _

“Lucifer.”

_ Could he tear down the Gates? Lucifer doesn’t put it past one of his many siblings to hold her soul hostage to keep him in line. He’ll be alone again, he’ll-- _

“Lucifer!”

He feels a sudden, sharp pain, shocking him into focus. He’s sitting on the bed, his wings flared in threat. The Detective has one hand twisted into his hair, the other gripping his shoulder, digging her nails in hard enough to mark. “Wha-?”

“Lucifer, do you see me?” Her voice is calm, but intent; it helps him focus a little more. 

“I see you, Detective.” He takes a breath, lets it out, takes another.

“Where are you?”

“I’m on Earth, in the penthouse.”

This rhythm, this ritual, even the slight sting of her nails … all built over years of trial and error, over beautiful afternoons filled with laughter and whispered confessions and entreaties in the dead of night. He knows where he is, that she’s with him, that whatever strange bond that lies between them is still working in his skin. He knows what she will ask next, and that he can ask for comfort in whatever way he needs with just the turn of phrase in his answer. 

“Yes, you’re with me," Chloe says. "Do you know why?”

And yes, he does, and yes, he needs exactly this. The vise in his chest loosens. On some nights he would claim her and play her body better than any virtuoso; on some nights he might simply tell her he's there because he loves her, and be touched and comforted and sleep holding her close. Not tonight. 

“Because I’m yours, Chloe,” he whispers, and feels the slight tightening of her fingers in his hair in acknowledgement, the truth of it in her eyes.

“That’s right.” She straddles him where he sits, rocks her body up against his and tilts his head to the side to graze her teeth against his neck, just beneath his jaw. He feels it shiver through him as she purrs beside his ear. “You are mine, Lucifer. You will always be mine. No one can ever take you away from me.” 

Then she takes his mouth and his brain empties of every thought but kissing her back, drinking her down like the sweetest water in a desert. He wraps his arms around her and feels the terror in him dissipate.

She pulls back and stands between his legs, shooting him a dirty little smile. “First things first, right?”

She touches his chest briefly to keep him where he is, then slides her hands under his robe to pull it off. She kisses and licks and nibbles everything she uncovers, and already his hands are gripping the sheets for dear life to keep still. She reaches his lap and suddenly swirls her tongue around the head of his cock to draw him in, sucking him all the way down and back up before releasing him with a little pop of her mouth.

“Aaghaah,” he cries out in surprise, then groans when she stands up instead of repeating the movement. 

Her eyes on his, Chloe slowly draws her nightgown up over her hips, her stomach, her breasts, until she finally pulls it off and lets it drop, the silk slithering against his leg as it falls. She turns away from him as she hooks a thumb at her hips to pull the simple navy underwear beneath, bending from the waist to give him a clear view as she slides them down over her ass, down her long legs, to the floor. She turns back to him as she steps out and kicks the lingerie to the side, confident in his gaze in a way he could never imagine when they’d first met. 

“Chloe …”

“Still good? Still with me?” The care and love in her voice strokes him as much as her hands.

“ _ Yesss _ . … what are you going to do?”

“Is there anything I shouldn’t do?” she counters.

He pauses. It’s hard to think with the curves of her breasts, the delicate rose of her nipples inches away from his lips. “I think …” He clears his throat. “I thank you for your timely intervention, darling, but no more pain, perhaps? Anything else, really. I’m at your disposal.”

She smiles, moves that short distance forward so he can lathe her breast. Her eyes flutter closed for a moment and her fingers twine into his hair again as a little shiver runs through her. She looks at him again, head tilted and eyes shining.

“I have no interest in hurting you,” she says, “unless, would you consider a few little love bites painful?”

The Devil laughs. “Oh, no, darling, not at all. Do your worst.”

The predatory little curl of her lips at that stops his laughter but lights up lower things. “Oh, I plan to, Lucifer. I think I’d like to tease you and ride you until you beg me to come. And then maybe more, who knows? It’s always nice to have the Devil at my mercy.” She shoots him a mischievous little grin. “What do you think of that plan?”

He smiles back, a little sparkle returning to his eyes. “I think it sounds bloody fantastic.”

* * *

Chloe feels the knot in her stomach untwist when Lucifer laughs, when desire pulls him fully back to her. Now, more than an hour in, her fingers scratch lightly over his chest and hips and thighs; they brush gently down a single feather here and there. Her mouth skims his cock over and over, deep but a shade too light to completely tip him over. 

His eyes and body are urgent, working toward desperate, but no longer lost. He hums and pants and moans against the bed, a hand from time to time pressing her shoulder or hair then pulling away, keeping himself still as best he can. He whines a little in the back of his throat when he sees her reach discreetly for the bottle of lubricant, then groans when she rubs a gentle finger against him before pressing in.

“Ahh! Mmm, darling, didn’t you say …. Mmmh-oh, ah, something about … riding me?”

“Hmm?” she hums questioningly against him, sucking hard and pressing up a little as she rolls her eyes up to him, rewarded by his dark lashes fluttering closed, his head arching back into the pillow and his wings flexing against the bed as he moans. 

“Chloe … darling … please, I’m clos-- _oh_.”

She slides her mouth off him with a little wet pop, stopping everything, watching the muscles in his thighs flex and his eyes snap open. Chloe slides along his body, teasing herself with the hard length of him as she moves to kiss him, but not sinking down onto him. 

“Close is good, I like close,” she murmurs against his mouth. “I’d like to stay right here on close, are you good with that?” She runs her nails lightly along his side.

His breath hisses in. “Yes.  _ Yes _ . Hhhmm.”

She stays where she is, enjoying the friction of him against her clit, rocking slowly, her hands braced on his chest. She leans down to kiss him again, to leave her marks at his collarbone and chest. He feels it, knows what she’s doing and helplessly rocks his hips harder against her. “Chloe … Chloe, ahh, yes, please, ahh,  _ more  _ …”

Her own pleasure builds, builds. He’s so beautiful. There is no King of Hell, she thinks, just Lucifer Morningstar, writhing and moaning underneath her. 

She laces her fingers with his own and nudges them toward her breasts, and he needs no more permission than that to stroke and flick and give tiny, not-quite-painful pinches to her nipples and oh, yeah, Chloe is pretty damn close herself.

“Close,” he grinds out from clenched teeth. “Close ... close,  _ close _ , Chloe, I--”

“Who do you belong to?” she asks. 

“ _ You _ ,” he gasps, his whole body rigid, and it’s enough, oh yes, absolutely. Chloe’s orgasm crashes through her and she cries out, now sliding him inside her with her inner walls still fluttering with aftershocks. His hands come down to hold her hips hard; she can feel in them how easily he could flip her over, switch their roles, and yet he’s panting, hanging helpless and willing on her word.

She rocks with him, knowing the rhythm; a dozen years of practice to know just how fast, just how to roll her hips here or lean back there to hold him off or drive him crazy. The Devil has had every kind of sex under the sun and may have invented half of them, but he’s never had anyone take so many years just to learn how to love him. 

Or someone who says so like a prayer. “I love you, Lucifer," she gasps. "You’re mine and I love you.”

With one hand she reaches out to the wing nearest her, cards her fingers through the silky coverts to the even softer down beneath and he cries out her name, begs shamelessly. 

She kisses him. “Yes, come on, yes, love.”

Lucifer’s arms and wings come up around her and hold her tightly as he thrusts up. She moves her own hands to hold the joints of his wings for leverage as she presses down. It’s enough to hit just the right place inside her, and to kick his rhythm up into frantic. 

Chloe holds on, feels the light and heat of him all around her, feels the orgasm build somewhere near the base of her spine and the back of her head and set off every nerve in her entire body as he thrusts once, twice, and comes so hard he shakes them both. 

They collapse into each each other, Chloe curling into Lucifer’s side and smiling as he rains little kisses over her eyelids and nose and face. She raises a hand now trembling a little with fatigue and cups his cheek. His hair curls every which way, her love bites have barely started to bruise and his mouth is swollen and smiling and utterly sated. He is gorgeously wrecked. “So, so good, Lucifer. I’m yours, too, you know.”

“I know. I love you, darling.”

Lucifer’s eyes close and he curls her a little tighter as they both drift. The ache isn’t gone, and he knows there’s more pain down the road, but it’s a little like his occasional bumps and cuts; he can live with it, if it means she’s here.

**Author's Note:**

> Folks may quibble with my specifics on exactly how Lucifer's vulnerability works, but frankly, I tried to figure out some sort of consistent pattern from the show, and it seems like a bit of a deus ex machina, excuse the pun. It's hard to tell how much of his vulnerability is Chloe's "miracle" status and how much is angelic self-actualization, and it's also hard to tell what counts as "injury." At one point, he stubs his toe and it's implied to be the first time that's ever happened, but he's definitely had hard-core fights with his brother that have left injuries. That generally implies that the vulnerability is to feeling or being injured by earthly things. But if a stubbed toe or a paper cut counts as an injury, doesn't that leave an awful lot out of the range of normal physical feeling he'd be exposed to on Earth? Anyway, this is just my own little thought experiment; I'd be happy to hear anybody else's ideas on what this means.


End file.
